Ethical literary criticism reads interprets and analyzes literature from an ethical perspective. It argues that literature is a unique expression of ethic and morality within a certain historical ...period, and that literature is not just an art of language but rather an art of text. In light of ethical literary criticism, moral enlightenment and education are literature's primary function, while aesthetic appreciation is merely second to it. Specifically, ethical literary criticism seeks to unpack the ethical features of literary works, to describe characters and their lives from the vantage point of ethics, and to make ethical judgments about them. In the history of human civilization, mankind underwent two important processes: natural selection and ethical selection. Natural selection allowed human beings to evolve from apes physically, whereas ethical selection distinguishes them from animals spiritually. In an ethical sense, mankind is the outcome of the Sphinx factor, which can be seen as the combination of the human and animal factors. The Sphinx factor is the central element expressed in literary works.
In his article "Luo's Ethical Experience of Growth in Mo Yan's Pow!" Zhenzhao Nie examines the protagonist's experience of self-discovery in the process of natural to ethical choice. Nie's analysis ...of the novel rests on the theoretical framework "ethical literary criticism" he developed. In the novel Luo's life is narrated in retrospect when he is attempting to become the disciple of a monk and al-though Luo does not find what he is searching for in religion, he arrives at a new stage in his life which is based on ethical principles. The young Luo is unable to make ethical choices as his decisions stem from his "animal factor." His craving of meat is a metaphor of the novel for materialism. Towards the end of the narrative, Luo's attempts at firing mortar shells are a symbolic gesture of breaking away from the past and of beginning a new life.
Hardy and Chinese New Poetry Nie, Zhenzhao; Guo, Wen
Literature compass,
03/2016, Letnik:
13, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Thomas Hardy is one of the Western writers who influenced early 20th‐century Chinese literary pioneers, especially following the birth of China's New Culture Movement in 1919. His poetic technique ...played a great role in changing and enriching Chinese poetry, largely between the Chinese New Poetry Movement and the 1950s. From the debut of the New Poetry Movement, Chinese poets were drawn to Hardy's poetic style, imagery and pattern beauty, taking him as a model and believing that his poetry would inject new blood into traditional Chinese literature. Chinese New Poetry representatives, such as Xu Zhimo, Wen Yiduo, Guo Moruo and Aiqing, to mention but a few, are greatly indebted to Hardy in their style, art and thought. They tried their best to follow Hardy and put forward as norms of the New Poetry “three beauties” of his poetic principles, namely musical beauty, painting beauty and architectural beauty, that conform to the unity of form and content.
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